“Ridley wanted to see me because of my ancestry,” said Evangeline.
“Before you gang up on me, remember that there were Pratts in the Twentieth Massachusetts with the Wedges. So . . . let’s see if they had anything to say to one another.”
“Just remember,” she said, “I’m not on a treasure hunt. I’m writing a book.”
“But of course you are.” Orson Lunt laughed.
Searidge: home to generations of Pratts and Carringtons. The big white house always reminded Peter Fallon of a clipper ship cresting a wave. But this ship had never sailed, and the wave was the granite coast of Marblehead.
“Pity your grandmother’s in Florida,” said Orson. “I always enjoy her stories.”
“Come back in June.” Evangeline took out the key, opened the door, and punched in the alarm code on the little keypad in the foyer.
“At least she decided to join the twentieth century,” said Peter.
“Alarm system, CD player, too . . . one of those little chairlifts to get her upstairs,” said Orson.
“But the good stuff is still the old stuff.” Evangeline led them up to the first landing, where they looked into the face of Horace Taylor Pratt, another Copley portrait. Once, the original had hung there. Now it was a large Polaroid reproduction. The original was on loan to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Peter hadn’t been in that attic in over twenty years, but attics don’t change much. There was a new spiral staircase rising to the trapdoor and the widow’s walk on the roof. The rest was a jumble, just as it had been twenty years earlier—clothes, furniture, piles of books, steamer trunks, metal boxes and filing cabinets filled with family papers, an old sword hanging from a rafter.
“Tell me again why your grandmother never let us go through this attic and conserve these things,” said Orson.
“She’s old,” said Evangeline.
“So are all these things.” Orson examined the sword.
“I’m just thankful we could persuade her to send the Copley to the museum. As for the rest of this stuff, she says it’s like having family members in the house. If she wants to visit them, she can just come right up.”
“She doesn’t strike me as the eccentric sort,” said Orson.
“She also says the longer it sits here, the more valuable it gets, like real estate.”
Peter went picking through the junk.
Orson flipped open a steamer trunk and looked in.
Evangeline said, “Those are old family Bibles.”
Orson lifted out the Bible on top.
“That’s the one from the twentieth century. It was begun by my grandmother’s father, George. He was the son of Artemus II, the one at Antietam. He died on the
Titanic.
There are three more Bibles there, from the 1600s on,” said Evangeline. “Grandmother always said they were too big to keep downstairs. One Bible was enough.”
“Worry about Bibles later,” said Peter. “Here’s what we came for.” He pointed to a metal box. There was a label on it:
ARTEMUS PRATT II.
Peter pulled out a folder of correspondence, all yellowed pages crumbling around the edges.
Soon he and Evangeline were sitting in the dormer at the front of the attic, with several piles of ancient papers spread out around them.
“Here we go,” said Peter. “Dated August twenty-first, 1861. ‘Dear Father, I am proud to say the regiment is well trained, and the family is invited to see the effects of six weeks’ drilling Sunday next at one o’clock. Bring everyone to see how brave we look under our banners. The Rebels will surely run at the first sight of us.’”
“Young men are so full of confidence when they go off to war,” said Orson.
Then something dropped out of the packet. It was a sepia-tinted image of a young woman seated against a curtained background in some ancient photographic studio.
“A c.d.v.,” said Orson.
“A what?” asked Evangeline.
“Carte de visite. A nice collectible.” Peter turned over the cardboard-backed image. “To brave Lieutenant Artemus, God Bless You and Keep You, Amelia Fleming.”
“That’s the girl who married Heywood Wedge.” Evangeline slipped the carte from Peter’s hands and looked at it more closely.
“I guess she liked young Pratt, too,” said Orson.
Peter read on through the letters, written once a week from Artemus Pratt to his father. They described the trip south, tenting on the Potomac, “the strange southern world of pic-a-ninny Washington,” and the bloody horror of Ball’s Bluff.
Then Orson said, “With a little editing, we have a publishable manuscript here.”
“I might do it myself,” said Evangeline.
“Well, you’ll need your strength,” said Orson. “And I know of a marvelous little Marblehead boîte where they make the most divine fried clams. Strictly take-out. While you two read on, I’ll go get three orders for lunch.”
“Make mine fried scallops,” said Evangeline.
“Get some onion rings, too.” Peter threw him the keys.
“What’s the alarm code?” asked Orson.
“I left it off,” said Evangeline.
“Fine. I won’t be long.”
By the time Orson drove off, they were back to reading Pratt’s letters, all through the horrors of the Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862, all of it fascinating, but few mentions of Lieutenants Warren and Wedge, or the girl in the carte de visite.
Then Evangeline found it: “‘September eighteenth, 1862. I write from a farmhouse in Keedysville, Maryland, now a field hospital for officers of the Twentieth. I have survived a bloody day with a wound in the calf. Holmes is here, miraculously alive despite being shot through the neck. Neddy Hallowell lies incoherent from fever and infection. Heywood Wedge had his leg amputated below the knee and bears it bravely. The maggots have not yet found his stump. But poor Douglass Wedge Warren has—’”
“Did you hear that?”
Evangeline looked up from the reading. “What?”
“Someone’s in the house.”
“Orson?”
Peter went to the dormer and looked down. No car. Not Orson.
Evangeline went to speak but fell silent when Peter pointed to the staircase.
Footfalls.
Two sets, climbing the stairs. It sounded as if they stopped a moment in front of the portrait of Horace Pratt. Maybe they were trying to decide if they should steal it. Then they continued up.
“They’re going through the house,” said Evangeline.
“Room by room.”
Evangeline’s eyes widened at the sound of drawers being pulled and contents dumped in the room right below her.
“Make that dresser by dresser,” he said.
She gestured to the staircase that led to the widow’s walk. “We could hide on the roof.”
“Been there. Done that,” said Peter, recalling his last visit to this attic. “What happens when Orson comes back?”
“But what if these guys are armed?”
He pulled out his cell phone and handed it to her. “Call nine-one-one. But whisper.” Then he tiptoed to the top of the stairs.
Before she could dial, the door from the second floor to the attic stairs opened.
“Do you think there’s anything up there?” whispered one guy.
“Could be shit up there. Could be what we’re lookin’ for, too.”
Peter looked at Evangeline and mouthed the words “lookin’ for?”
Then the two young men started up the narrow staircase.
Peter put a finger to his lips, then he turned to the rafter behind him and carefully lifted the sword, scabbard and all, from the peg on which it hung.
Evangeline shook her head. What if they had a gun? But the top of one of the heads was appearing now, wearing a Boston Bruins cap.
Peter yanked at the hilt, expecting the sword to swing out of the scabbard with a resounding
thwang.
But it wouldn’t budge.
And now, the guy in the Bruins cap was looking right at them.
“Oh, God,” said Evangline.
“What the fuck?” The guy in the Bruins cap: Jackie Pucks.
“People!” cried the other one, a little guy with a ring in his eyebrow. “You said the people left.”
“They did,” cried Jackie. “Or at least their car left.”
Peter knew these guys were more surprised than he was. So he pulled back the sword, scabbard and all, and held it ready to strike. “Stop right there.”
“Yeah,” said Evangeline, pressing the buttons on the phone. “The police are on the way.” Except that she dropped the phone.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.” The little guy turned and went stumbling down the stairs.
Jackie Pucks would have been right behind him, except that Evangeline bent down to grab the phone, and Jackie grabbed for it first. So Peter smashed the sword down on Jackie’s wrist and sent him tumbling back.
Peter went after him.
And Evangeline called the police.
But as Peter burst out the door to the attic stairway, he was met by a fist in the belly, then another off the side of the head.
He stumbled back into the stairwell, the door was slammed shut, and a deadbolt was thrown from the other side, locking them into the attic.
By the time the police got them out, Orson had returned and Peter and Evangeline had their stories straight: They had come to the house to do some cataloging work for Evangeline’s grandmother. They left the alarm off, and someone sneaked in, thinking that the house was empty. Peter persuaded Evangeline that they should not mention that he recognized one of them.
She demanded a reason, of course.
“Because somebody put those guys on our tail. And somebody tried to run me down in the river. It’s all connected to
Love’s Labours.
I need to find out how. When it’s time for police, I’ll know who to turn to.”
“I could stop this right now,” she said. “Just blow the whistle.”
He slipped his arm around her. She was still shaking from the fight. He held her tight and whispered, “Do you really want to do that?”
“Remember, Peter, I’m writing a book . . . about the Radcliffe Eight.”
“So let’s get back to reading about Dorothy’s son. Maybe he was an inspiration.”
While the local police dusted for fingerprints (though both intruders had been wearing gloves), Peter, Evangeline, and Orson ate their fried seafood feast, and Evangeline finished the letter from Artemus Pratt.
“‘Douglass Wedge Warren died the day of the battle. I saw him put a locket into the hands of Sergeant Callahan and whisper several words to him before expiring. Whether he intended to return the locket to his mother, send it to someone else, or give it to Callahan for his brave services during the battle, I do not know.’”
“So,” said Fallon. “The locket passed to someone named Callahan.”
“How did Bertram Lee get it?” asked Orson.
“I don’t know. But I think it’s time to ask Mr. Keegan.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” asked Evangeline.
Peter Fallon and his brother, Danny, stepped out of a bright March afternoon and into the drinker’s darkness. Half a dozen sets of eyes looked up from their boilermakers.
Peter hadn’t been in the Rising Moon Pub in twenty years. “Just as I remembered it,” he whispered to Danny. It was still the same narrow, crowded dump, with a row of booths along one wall and a few tables in the middle of the floor, and still that smell—stale beer mingled with the essence of urine-soaked disinfectant cake and well-done pastrami grease.
“Don’t ask for any fuckin’ French wine,” said Danny out of the corner of his mouth. “Beer only. And drink from the bottle.”
They sat at the bar.
“Danny Fallon,” said the bartender, an ex-con called Smithy, not because Smith was his name but because of his forearms, which were the size of Peter’s thighs. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Come in to drink with the men?”
“Bingo?” said Danny.
“You mean ‘bingo’ like, ‘Yeah, Smithy, I’m here to drink with the men’? Or ‘Bingo’ like ‘Mr. Keegan’?”
Danny said, “I want to talk to Mr. Keegan.”
Peter noticed a black raincoat hanging from the hook on the last booth, and just visible above the seat back was a Bruins cap and a pair of eyes. Jackie Pucks.
Peter told his brother, “Stay here.”
“Be polite,” said Danny.
“Yeah,” said Smithy, “we got good fuckin’ manners in here.”
As Peter approached the back booth, Jackie stood. There was a mirror over Jackie’s head, so the guy seated opposite him could see everyone who came in or out without turning around. Jackie looked down, nodded at something the guy said, then stepped over to the bar.
Peter did not say a word to the young thug. He just sat down and looked James “Bingo” Keegan in the eye.
Keegan was wearing a gray scally cap, a white dress shirt open at the collar, and a plaid vest sweater with three lottery tickets sticking out of a pocket. A cup of black coffee, a pack of Camels, and a silver cigarette lighter were spread on the table in front of him.
“So”—Keegan smiled, revealing teeth as gray as his cap—“the saints are singing your name.”
“You know who I am?”
“Big Jim Fallon’s kid, gone all Back Bay on us. What are you drinkin’?”
“Coffee.”
“You sure? Maybe Smithy has a bottle of Olivier LaFlaive Puligny-Montrachet ’ninety-six back there. If he doesn’t, I know where I could get my hands on a few cases. What’s that wine go for these days, about seventy bucks a bottle?”
“Eighty. You have a wide range of interests, Mr. Keegan,” said Peter. “And you pronounce your French quite well.”
“
Merci
.” Keegan gestured to Smithy for another coffee, which appeared on the table in front of Fallon, in the bandaged hand of Jackie Pucks.
Fallon ignored the coffee—and the hand—and said to Keegan, “Why are you so interested in me that you know I like white Burgundies?”
“Local boy made good. That interests everyone.”
“Enough to be causing me trouble since October?”
“Trouble?”
“You followed me home one night last fall.”
“Me? Follow you?” Keegan’s bemused expression did not change.
“Well, someone borrowed your scally cap and your raincoat, then. And someone tried to run me down in the Charles River a few days ago. And one of your boys broke into a house in Marblehead this morning.”
“I heard about that.”
“Word travels fast.”
Keegan took a measured sip of coffee. Then he said, in the same pleasant tone, “Peter Fallon, who the fuck do you think I am, some mailman, all done with my route, killin’ an afternoon in here before I go home to the wife? If somethin’ happens around me that I should know about, I know about it . . . usually before it happens.”